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the finding of a jury, especially such a finding under a writ of inquiry

Inquisition(noun)

a court or tribunal for the examination and punishment of heretics, fully established by Pope Gregory IX. in 1235. Its operations were chiefly confined to Spain, Portugal, and their dependencies, and a part of Italy

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Inquisition

The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy. It started in 12th-century France to combat the spread of religious sectarianism, in particular the Cathars and the Waldensians. This Medieval Inquisition persisted into the 14th century, from the 1250s associated with the Dominican Order. In the early 14th century, two other movements attracted the attention of the Inquisition, the Knights Templar and the Beguines.
At the end of the Middle Ages, the concept and scope of the Inquisition was significantly expanded, now in the historical context of the turmoils of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Its geographic scope was expanded to other European countries, as well as throughout the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Its focus now came to include the persecution of sorcery, making it one of the agents in the Early Modern witch-hunts.
The institution persisted after the end of the witch-trial period in the 18th century, but was abolished outside of the Papal States after the Napoleonic wars. The institution survives as part of the Roman Curia, but it was renamed to Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1904.

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Inquisition

an ecclesiastical tribunal established in 1248 under Pope Innocent IV., and set up successively in Italy, Spain, Germany, and the S. of France, for the trial and punishment of heretics, of which that established in Spain achieved the greatest notoriety from the number of victims it sacrificed, and the remorseless tortures to which they were subjected, both when under examination to extort confession and after conviction. The rigour of its action began to abate in the 17th century, but it was not till 1835, after frequent attempts to limit its power and suppress it, that it was abolished in Spain. Napoleon suppressed it in France in 1808, and after an attempted revival from 1814 to 1820, its operations there came to an end. St. Dominic (q. v.) has the credit of having invented the institution by the zeal which animated him for the orthodoxy of the Church.